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In some sense, the feelings and hurt from the past still haunts me to this day.  It has been several years after my last big relationship break-up.  To be exact, it has been nearly four years.  The thing I have come to learn about trauma is that it never leaves your body.  If you let it, it can corrupt your mind and tear your soul apart.  Everything you do, from that day on, will be touched with a hint of hurt, sadness & disappointment.  There comes a challenge in opening yourself up, emotionally and psychologically to someone, that leaves an opening for that other person to take advantage, in such a way as to hurt the person on the other end.
I would describe myself as a person who feels very deeply.  I can sense other people’s emotions and sometimes this even gets into my state.  Their state can overwhelm me.  So, not only do I feel my emotions quite deeply, I can also sense other emotions.  I don’t think this comes from being supernatural or ‘psychic’ in any way but being very aware and perceptive of yourself and everything around you.  I have learned to pick up on facial/body cues and language to learn something about myself and the other person.  Sometimes, what I learn isn’t always good – mostly it is.
Having kind-of a dark & troubled past, I have chosen to keep to the side of ‘good’.  Sometimes when people come through a rough time, this can be the makings of them or it can break them.  Because of everything I can be hurt quite easily, depending on who the other person is.
While I was with my ex-girlfriend, back in 2014, I really made a big effort to open myself up to her, even to the point of nearly wanting to cry.  To me, emotions are natural & normal, and it is said, that if you don’t express you repress and this can lead to a build up of anger & resentment.  It is only through our own psychological defences that we learn to repress.  As an adult, most things you do is a learned behaviour.
To push forward, one of my bigger fears in life is to be abandoned, forgotten or left alone.  I have an image of me, that I can conjure up, in my head that is one of a little boy (I can even picture myself as a small child, through photos I have seen of myself).  This little boy has been abandoned and cast away by all those he loved and is now on his own.  Somewhere in my body and mind, this image will haunt me.  When I say ‘abandoned’, I mean, I must really love the other person on a deep level, for this to affect me. 
During the mid-way point of my relationship with my ex-girlfriend I divulged some information to her that I would some come to deeply regret.  One evening (If my memory serves me correctly, I remember it being dark out) I let her in on my ‘secret’ fear.  I don’t remember if this happened organically through conversation or if I just blurted it out.  I told her my fear of being cut-off, left alone or abandoned by someone I really loved.  I think, if I remember right, I felt like I was about to cry saying this to her.  AT the time, I think I remember her confirming that she would never do that.  I don’t think, as far as I remember, I ever got a handle on what really scared her.  I didn’t think much of it at the time.  I didn’t think it would come back to haunt me in any way.  I had some faith in girls back then.  This was at a time where everything was going great.  These times I would look back on with fond memories. 
Fast forward to several months later, during a time where we were breaking up.  I can’t’ say that I was an angel throughout this relationship.  I have documented this before, but I had a certain fear of being hurt – don’t we all.  I used to sabotage different parts of this relationship, from time to time.  The act of sabotaging something comes from the belief that whatever you’re pursuing will bring you pain, in some way.  If there is pain to be felt, humans will run from it.  I think, looking back at the relationship, there were many instances of myself self-sabotaging the relationship.  I think I was aware of this at the time, if only just for a brief second.  God only knows what this girl thought I was doing.  The truth was, I was somewhat insecure with the fact I was going out with this girl.  I thought she was too good-looking for me and she could do a lot better.  That was my belief and I enacted this belief with sure-fire ways to make this girl either hate me or dump me.  I thought we would be together for a long time.  IN the end, this girl did dump me.  Fair deuce to her, she stuck by her guns and dumped me, as she should have done.  It wasn’t all bad though, there were moments where I laid down my soul to her and became vulnerable.  In the end, it wasn’t that she broke up with me that was the issue but HOW she ended it.  My worst fears were confirmed.  She just stopped talking to me, out of the blue.  At the time, I was certain she would come back around and talk to me again.  This wasn’t the case at all.  I soon learned that she wasn’t coming back.  They say that your fears are mostly imagined and if you come face to face with the thing you’re afraid of, the result won’t be half as daunting as you thought it would be.  Somehow, this wasn’t true here.
For MONTHS after, I pined after this girl, like I was a lost puppy-dog.  I never got closure.  As a great overthinker, my mind went into hyper-drive for months on end.  I would say, even to this day I haven’t got over that trauma.  I’m certain she doesn’t care or doesn’t really think about me or what happened (She shouldn’t have to – she is getting on with her own life). 
Now, I can only look back at that time, not with bitterness or anger, but with gratitude.  Her taking the step to end things and cease contact, WAS a good idea.  That pain and inner anguish I felt, spurred me on to start writing again.  There is a little saying that I still think is sweet:
 
‘To the world, you are one person.  To one person, you are the world’.
I learned a lot about my life, women and love from that experience.  It has caused me to be cautious around girls, from then on.  It was always in the back of my mind.  Not only not spending time with her anymore, but how she ended things.  I think it brought me back being a foster child and my real mother ‘abandoning’ me to someone else.  My real mother is now dead and I will never forget both these instances of abandonment.  Whether the pain was caused intentionally or not, I still dream about it every now again and what could have been.  I knew things would never be the same again.